Summer in Orlando is a great time to get outside and have some fun. But that doesn’t mean you can’t support your child’s speech and language development. It can be just about anywhere, in the backyard, park, and even on vacation.
Turning everyday fun summer activities into meaningful opportunities to help boost our child’s communication skills is easier than you think.
It’s Time To Have Some Fun With These Summer Themed Exercises
Blowing bubbles
Blowing bubbles is a favorite activity. It’s engaging, fun, and helps support speech development. Your child won’t even realize they are fostering their communication development.
Take the bubble container and hold it just out of reach
This helps create motivation for your child to communicate. Encouraging them to verbally ask for the bubbles, reach or point for it.
Hand them the bottle, but don’t open it
This is a simple way to help prompt them to request for help. Give them a few minutes to process before assisting them. Ask them what they want often leads to natural communication, such as, “help” or “open”
Model language by Taking turns
Building predictable social rules helps them understand what happens next. Phrases such as “your turn” and “my turn”, while blowing bubbles.
Verbal cues
Repeating predictable verbal cues helps your child participate and anticipate what happens next. It can be as easy as “1, 2, 3, blow” or “ready, set, go”
Have Fun popping bubbles
As you pop a bubble with your hand or wand say “Pop”. This will encourage them to do the same. Speech development can be fun and simple with repetitive language.
What do you see?
Use description words to talk about what you see. This could be movement, direction, and size of the the bubbles. Building vocabulary and language with words such as, “big”, “little”, “going up”, or “going down”
Speech and language therapy can be very flexible, it can easily be planned around all your summer activities. It will be definitely worth it!
Check back with us next week for more information on summer speech therapy for your child, until then contact First Words Speech Therapy for more information.
